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Football

16th Feb 2016

Danny Mills names Arsenal legend as the player who brought diving to England

Patient zero

Darragh Murphy

3 July, 2000.

Prior to this date, nobody dived in the Premier League but, since then, it’s turned into a modern phenomenon.

That’s not according to us. It’s according to former Manchester City full-back Danny Mills who has claimed that Arsenal legend Robert Pires is to blame for the simulation epidemic that’s currently on display in England.

Mills and Pires had a notoriously strained relationship on the pitch and Mills believes the Frenchman, who signed for the Gunners from Marseille, brought the culture of going down easy with him.

Arsenal v Manchester City

“It is true that there was no love lost between me and Pires,” Mills wrote in The Times. “I spent many years playing against him as a right back, for Leeds United and Manchester City, and we had what might be called a fractious relationship.

“I will always remember him as the player who, in my view, really brought diving into the English game; his habit of throwing himself to the ground without any provocation always infuriated me.”

Does he have a point?

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